Angst from my angst-ridden soul

I came on to write a chatty post, free of angst, about how my robot series is finally coming to life and how happy I am that I'll get to write it after all. I was also going to talk about how I've set myself a deadline to finish my Rome novel by September 13th (which, it just occurs to me, is also my wedding anniversary).

However, the door rang and the mail lady gave me a package. "Jaycinth" is the name on the return address.

Inside the package is as follows:

1) A heavy ceramic dish

2) Which has gummy worms in it

3) As well as the best macadamia and butterscotch cookies this world has ever known.

So instead of sharing feelings with you, I'm going to sit here and stuff my face unto death.

Oh, and sleepy Zach says hi.

*wave*

Let me tell you about MY weekend.

Worst weekend ever. EVER.

Let's break it down.

Friday daytime was busy, full of a busy work shift, time spent with all sorts of families. I'm already a very stressed out person, so it was a long day. But not as bad as...

FRIDAY NIGHT: Friday night was a fascinating experience of ups and downs. Many a time have we told my wife's mother that we have bad storms here in Minnesota. She, being an idiot, has no idea what this means. She lives in Nevada. They get slightly muddy out there. So while visiting us, every time we had a drizzle or some wind and a few clouds, she'd titter, "Oh you had your storm!"

"That was not a storm."

So on Friday night, we got hit. I mean nailed. On a doppler map, the extreme dark red part of the storm nailed St. Cloud, us in particular. The storm was a huge, violent, long-running, powerful thing. Lightning struck the field next to us and across the street from us. It brought down trees. At around midnight, it struck our building itself and we lost almost all the electricity in the building. The wind was at seventy miles an hour. Nickel-sized hail. Pounding rain, flooding. Everything.

So on the plus side, I'm happy that my wife's mother is going into a panic attack about this. I'm not keen on her anyway, and it's about time she got to experience a storm. "That's a mother-effing storm, damn it!" I would have gleefully shouted.

The hallways were mostly dark. There were patches of lights on. There was also a deep throbbing HUM from the elevator, God knows why. Anyway, it was deeply frightening in the hallways, and not just because I can give myself the heebie-jeebies at the drop of a hat. Creepy.

So, we had to go down to Mother-In-Law's guest apartment (where she lived, one floor below us, for the longest month of my life) to bring her some matches and candles, since we had no power. My wife went down there once by herself while I stayed with Tzinski 2.0. She came back up reporting that 1) M-I-L had not answered 2) It was creepy 3) All throughout the floor, there was this loud sound of a distressed cat meowing, as if it were coming at you from the walls themselves. Freaky.

So, I went down with her the second time. Her mom answered. It was delightful to watch her freaking out. Then, we went back out into the hallway. Standing in the apartment building's hallway was a cat. A skinny little cat, part Siamese, with beautiful blue eyes and a terrified meow.

I managed to pick it up, when it came to me. Without knowing what else to do, we took it back upstairs and locked it in our bathroom, gave it food or water. It seemed a bit like an outdoor cat, although it was trusting of people and knew how to use a litter box. We had no idea.

The storm went, and kept us up, until 5:00am. By the time the storm finished for good so we could have gotten sleep, it was 6:30. Zach was beginning to wake up. We had to meet Renee's parents at 7:00. They wound up getting some sleep. We got zero sleep.

SATURDAY DAYTIME: This is the day when we deal with her parents, and then with my parents, and then I have to go to work, where it was extremely busy. I am running on maybe a total of twenty minutes sleep. You thought I was hypertensive and an unkind person before? You should see me here. BY that night, I'm weird and tired and miserable and haven't really eaten any food all day. Which brings us to:

SATURDAY NIGHTTIME: Zach stayed up all night, and I do mean all damn night. And when he wasn't up, I was taking care of my wife, who was unable to get warm, despite the fact that she had four heavy blankets on her. She was also running a fever. She couldn't take care of the baby, or herself. So I had to do both. And also keep an eye on the hyper cat in the bathroom. Saturday night, I got maybe an hour of sleep. So, this is two nights of almost no sleep.

SUNDAY DAYTIME: I go to work. Half an hour later, my wife calls. She has a fever of 103.7 degrees. She is barely conscious. Certainly, she can't take care of the baby. So I made lots of frantic phone calls until I found someone who could cover for me. I got home and my sister and I took my wife (and son, who can't stay home yet) to the Emergency Room. We got to the hospital at 12:30. They admitted her to a room at 3:00. They treated her eventually. We finally got to go home at 8:30 at night. We also didn't get to eat all day. Nothin'.

SUNDAY NIGHT: We get home. We have to take care of Zach, who no longer wants to sleep. Also, a hyper cat. My wife fortunately began to feel better and tended to Tzinski 2.0 a little bit, and I mercifully got a little bit more sleep. Which brings us to:

MONDAY DAY: Where I worked, began to recover from the worst weekend ever, took the cat to the humane society (which is a whole blog post by itself, since Humane Societies are generally about as helpful as killing the animal yourself; I swear they get their rocks off killing things)

and

MONDAY NIGHT: When I write a blog post.

So. How are you tonight?

Got My Luggage!

We got our suitcase Sunday night around 8:45. Hooray.

US Air still sucks.

Back From Vacation! US Airways Sucks!

What do you mean, "Oh... you were gone??"

We had a lovely time on our cruise. I'll post details later, and bore the ever-loving shit out of you. I promise.

Today is reserved for my loathing and disgust with US Airways. I hate them all. May the airline go bankrupt. (Cheers!)

We arrived at the airport 7:30 Friday morning for a 2:45 flight. Yeah, won't be using THAT travel agency again. Anyway. All was spiffy until we noticed that Every. Single. US Air. Flight. Was. LATE. Coming in, going out, didn't matter. We also noticed that every Delta, AA, Norwegian Air, Bob's Airplane Service (and Bait & Tackle) was On. Time.

Our flight was almost an hour late. We had a 50 minute window to make the connection. Well, now we're down to -10 minutes. EVERYONE ELSE on the flight was rebooked to better connections. Except us. We're cursed or something. We go up to the counter to ask WTH??? and the guy's like "Oh... yeah. You're heading to Harrisburg. We were going to talk to you last."

Uh-oh. That can't be good.

"There's no way you're going to make your connection and we don't have anything else available until tomorrow."

Really. Not. Good.

"We can get you to Philadelphia and put you up in a hotel."

Um, no.

"Or we can put you up in Charlotte."

Slightly better, but still... no.

We wait for the flight to Charlotte, and en route, the pilot makes up some time. We now have a fabulous 8 minutes to make our connecting flight.

We land in Concourse B 4.

By the time we got off the plane, we had 5 1/2 minutes. Of course, the connecting flight was on time. Bastards.

Connection is in Concourse E 18. As you can see, it's a freaking hike.

Concourse E is up here ...................................X


and B is here ^

We RAN through the airport and made it just as they were closing the doors. They let us on (HOORAY!).

My chest was on fire. I am way out of shape. Oy.

We land in Harrisburg. (Yay! Almost home!)

But.

Only one of our suitcases landed with us.

Keep in mind, we had gotten up at 5 A.M. to be off the ship & to the airport. It's now 8:45 P.M. I was *not* a happy camper. Throw in a complete bitch with a comprehension deficiency at the luggage counter, and I'm ready to twist someone's head off and play soccer with it.

The dimwit in Miami put someone else's name on one of our suitcases. It is taking the scenic route to Harrisburg from Miami, via Houston.

Allegedly, we are guaranteed to have our suitcase within 48 hours. Yeah. I'll believe it when I have it in my hands.

What really irks me is that 90% of my souvinirs are in that suitcase. And my favorite jeans. I just want my stuff.

Grrrrrrr.

The War Overseas

No, not that war. Another war.

People keep telling me I look really tired (which is really true) and they assume that it's because of the baby. This is incorrect. Actually, we've all settled into nice routines, Me, Myne Wyfe, & My Son. It's the in-laws that wear me out.

There are lots of reasons. Mostly, they're idiots. If they read this (which I doubt), I am unapologetic. Most exhausting of all is how deeply racist they all are. I really lucked out with Myne Wyfe, apparently. She's the sane, good-looking, intelligent one of the tribe.

(Examples of racism: My sister makes an offhand comment that there's a lot of crime in Washington D.C.. Mother-in-Law's first comment is, "So there's a lot of black people in the area...?" OR, My sister points out that the caretaker of our apartment building is rude to her. Mother-In-Law: "So is she Mexican?")

It's lazy racism. She's just stupid. For example, although black people and Mexicans are apparently evil (I forgot; we apparently are in danger of terrorism here in Minnesota because we have a lot of people from Africa and Simolea here.) she goes on and on about how Italy and Italians have a "different and unique culture," (because she's Italian). THey are just different. It's not bad. Just different. Different culture. Were that she allowed other cultures to have differences too.

Anyway, apart from this, we get a lot of telemarketing calls around the house. Lord knows why. For the past few days, I've been angry enough (translation: really wants to put an axe through someone's face; anyone will do) that I've gotten through my phone phobia and started taking telemarketing calls. I'm not mean. I doubt I'm capable of being mean. But I'm not nice, and I feel better for a bit.

Three calls, the past two days, have been from some unknown name and weird number I didn't recognize. I didn't think anything of it. I would answer them. Some deep, accented male voice would say. "....Hello....? Renee...is there....?"

"Nope," I would say, "Wrong number. She's gone for a bit." and then when they started stammering, I'd hang up. Take THAT, outsourced telemarketing bastards!

This morning, after the third call from this same deep voice, my wife looked at the number.

"That's an Italy number," she said. "Probably one of M-I-L's relatives. She gave out our number to everyone."

I have therefore been rudely hanging up on some Italian relative of Renee's whom we've never met, who probably doesn't even speak English (the last time one of her relatives called from Italy, he babbled at us in Italian for thirty seconds and we hung up in confusion).

I'm a teensy bit guilty-feeling about this. Mostly, I'm enjoying it.

Excuse me, I have to go sharpen my axe.

Are you there, God? It's me, Satan.

Before The Dawn of Time:

Hey, God. Sorry to bother you. I know you're getting ready for your project's big launch. I was just letting you know we got here okay. I hope you're not still mad at us. No hard feelings, huh? Really spacious down here. A bit warm, but we'll manage.

300 Million B.C.:

Hey, me again. I wandered around Earth a bit last week, hope you don't mind. Nice place, really pretty, great job on the fjords. When I still upstairs, I heard you had Slartibartfast on those. Was that still the case? He did a great job. I'm getting a really red rash all over my body and wings from the heat. I think I'm allergic to brimstone, which is weird, 'cause there's a lot of it. No fun. Gotta go.

Genesis:

Hey, I just wanted to say sorry really quick. I know you were keen on that man and woman and all, but she was having such an issue with that diet thing of hers, you know, I didn't think it'd hurt, so I was all like 'fruit's great for you.' Totally didn't know what was up with that tree. I am all about making that up to you.

354 A.D.:

Hi. I know they were going on about what I was up to on Earth, so this is just an FYI to let you know I wasn't doing anything. It's all weird down there. I never know how to act. I know, I know, "when in Rome, do like the Romans," but when I was in Rome, it was weird. So I've been working from home. Hope things are okay there. We tried putting in a cooling system, but all I get is sulfur out of it. Really sucks. Later.

1969:

Hey, God. I know they're going on and on about me getting into the music scene, you know, but I'm really not. I don't get that rock and roll stuff at all. I'm big into classical and blues, you know, so I try to enjoy that whenever I'm on Earth. It's a shame that when they die, they go up there. All I get down here are rock and rollers and these guys from ghettos who talk in rhyme to beats. I don't know what to do with them. I gave them the sulfur cooling system.

1999:

I know you don't normally tell people this stuff -- tight-lipped guy, you are! ha ha! -- but I was wondering if the world was REALLY ending? Do I need to be clearing room for the final arrivals? Only we're pretty full right now. This free-verse poetry thing has really filled up our nooks and crannies. BTW, I thought that Y2K thing was a hoot! You're such a kidder.


2007:

Emo kids: not me. Can I not have them when they go? Honestly, the grunge folks are bad enough. Also, WTF is up with Scientology? Sometimes, I just don't get your jokes.

Gotta go. Later.

Yrs.
Satan

Writing skullduggery

Remember that bit where I mentioned I'd done a good 2,500 words?

Well, I started to type them into the manuscript, making my changes as I went and reading it for errors.

Then I realized that some of the logistics were off.

Then I realized that the whole scene was off.

Then I realized that the scene, as it's being told, Does Not Work. I think it needs to be told by another character, who is looking back on the scene. But I'm not sure that works either. I keep putting it together that way in my head and it comes off awkward.

So I thought maybe I should tell it from the bad guy's standpoint. Except I haven't gotten into a bad guy's head this whole time and wasn't planning on it. And there aren't many details to tell from the bad guy's standpoint. So THAT doesn't work.

So, having typed up 1,000 out of the 2,500 words, I have stopped typing. I will need to erase a chunk of this (not too much, possibly, I hope).

It's not that I hate the You are on the wrong track alarm that goes off in my head. That's dead useful, like a Spider Sense. It's that it doesn't come equipped with a here's the right track alarm which tells me where to go instantly. So rather than working, I get to just stew on it. Hmph.

Anyone want to finish this Rome novel for me? Can we stop the ride? Can I get off?

*beleagured wave, then heads off to Run Errands With Wife & Baby*

Because I have been asked...

Since some people are hazy about where in Minnesota I live, and so I would like to say that:

1) I live in St. Cloud, forty-five minutes away from the cities.

2) I am fine, my family and friends are fine.

3) I am nonetheless deeply heartbroken for the people who WERE on the bridge when it collapsed.

4) Moment of weirdness is that we now have to find a new route for our trip to the cities, which was planned on Friday and would have been in the vicinity of the bridge.

...

That said, life around here is peacefully chaotic. Zach, ignorant of all the horror stories you hear about newborn babies, behaves himself and is thoroughly enjoyable. When he cries, or fusses, then his diaper is dirty or he's hungry. Fix whichever the problem is and he settles back down. He spends lots of time awake, but he's quiet and peaceful. Just enjoys looking around. (Not that he can focus more than 15 inches in front of himself yet, but nevermind.)

Runt, one of our three sibling cats (and then we have our fourth non-related cat), is a deeply jealous and insecure cat who doesn't like having to compete for attention with other cats. He needs to be cuddled and felt loved. We always say he'd be a perfect old lady cat. We were curious to see how he'd do with the baby, since he tends to get scared and react with hostility toward new arrivals.

He is fascinated and fixated on the baby, in a non-violent way. He wants to be near Zach and lie by him, he acts in a non-afraid and comfortable manner. He acts different (more dignified and secure) around us now too. It's a complete change.

The other day, he found a way into the crib on accident. This Is A Bad Thing, and of course we've remedied the situation. It was no less adorable, though, to come in the bedroom and find Zach sound asleep with Runt curled up at his feet, just looking at him.

The other night, I wrote 2,500 words of Rome novel; the first thing I've written since about three weeks before Renee had the baby. I'm not back on track yet (and, having plenty of non-writing time to think and analyze it, I realize I've been off-track for years now) but maybe I'm getting there. I think I have a very long-winded article/post to write, mostly for my own benefit, talking about my writing and where it perhaps went wrong. Of course, that'll be for another day. My computer time is a bit limited these days, which is not entirely a bad thing.

I love Zach to death. Have I mentioned that? Honestly, he's great. Yessir, I will love him right up to the bit where he gets colic, and then I'm going to sell him to Wal-Mart production shops.

...

I got a haircut. I have short hair again. Profoundly weird. I look like a human being for example. Since everyone in the world prefers me with short hair ("it makes you look like an adult, and NOT a lemur") I have it now. I always mean to gather up my hair when they cut it and donate it to something useful, but I can never get up the courage to ask the nice (and not totally unattractive) girl who cuts me hair if she will please sweep my dead hair into a bag for me. For a good cause? Yes. Profoundly weird? Hoyeah.

Also, what is it with people in haircut places having really awful haircuts? How is this a good thing? You want a guy with a boring simple haircut and girls who very little hairstyle at all. You don't want them to have only half a head of hair which is spiked and looks bizarre and hungry. Do you? Of course not. Would you go to a doctor who was covered in scars and missing an eye, 'cuz he liked to practice? That's what I thought.

Whoops. Mr. Baby's awake. Off I go!

New Toys!

I got myself some new toys today! Since Pete got a new baby and all, I thought I should have something new as well, but I wanted something that didn't poop or cry. ;o)

I ended up at OfficeMax (drool, I looooooove office supplies) and I bought myself a nifty 250G external hard drive. My computer is about 5 years old... I know, that's like a billion in computer years, but there's not a darn thing wrong with it other than I'm running out of space. I've never had this one apart, so I didn't want to mess with internal stuff. I spent the better part of my evening backing up my photos and music, my two biggest spacehogs. I also burned all the photos to CD that hadn't already been done. But I just can't make myself delete the pictures off the computer yet.

I also bought myself a new camera. Since I'm going on a cruise in a few short days, I wanted a small camera that I can tote around all day, every day. I have a Canon PowerShot S2 IS, which I love, love, LOVE. But it's big and bulky and not good for carrying around for long periods of time. I also have a PowerShot A430 that I got dirt cheap for my kid to use.

I saw a nifty waterproof Pentax that caught my eye, so I went into three - THREE - different stores, and in EVERY store, the display model was inoperative. All three of them. So my thought was that A) There's a disgruntled Pentax ex-customer going around destroying all display models of that specific camera, or B) They don't handle actual usage well and I shouldn't buy one. I went with B) and didn't buy one.

I *did* however, buy a Canon PowerShot SD1000, which is tiny and freaking adorable. I decided on it because Canon has never done me wrong, even back to my 35mm days. It was also on sale, which helped sway my decision. It's no bigger than a deck of cards, and the screen on the back is a really nice 2.5". It's also got 7.1 MP and a 3x optical zoom. Not quite as much zoom as I like (the S2 IS has 12x), but it'll suffice for vacation and everyday stuff. It's also tiny enough that I can just keep it in my purse for whenever photo-taking opportunities arise. Yay.

Oh, and 2G memory cards were on sale Buy one, get one free. Double Yay. Now I can put one in my S2 and have one in the new one. Son will inherit my 1G, I guess.

Huh?

What the hell is "Pete's Shelf" and why is there no "Carrie's Shelf"???

*grumble grumble*

Tzinski 2.0 Released From Beta

Associated Press

In a press conference, held today, the Tzinski corporation was pleased to announce that on July 24th, at 11:07am, Tzinski 2.0 was released to the public. Weighing in at six pounds, nine ounces and with a head of hair, this new model -- named Zachary Thomas Tzinski -- is expected to have a long product run.
"We are pleased with the launch of this new generation in our exciting Tzinski product line," said president and CEO Renee Tzinski, "And we are looking forward to many years of support for our customer line."
Also announced at this same press conference was that continued support of Tzinski 1.0 (jokingly called "Pete," by consumers) will continue.
"Although Tzinski 2.0 is exciting and groundbreaking in ways that our original model could never manage, we do intend to continue promoting and supporting the talents and abilities of Tzinski 1.0, which we think will still have at least two more years of use and active service."
No patches have been released for for Zachary Thomas Tzinski software, and already the hardware has already produced several ouputs.

.

Does he not shut up?

Every night, without fail, when I click the Stumble button a few times and after I've cycled past the games and the cat pictures (honestly, how many of those do we need? I have four cats. I don't come online to look at MORE CATS), it brings me to some sort of writing page.

Most of these are harmless and I think little of them one way or the other. Some of them, though, are How To Write More Betterer pages. I don't understand them. I don't agree with them.

Tonight, I found The Snowflake Method.

Well...

I briefly considered going through the Snowflake Method bit by bit and taking it apart here, so you would have a long blog post to skip. But then I realized I really hate blogger who quote articles bit by bit just so they can snip at 'em.

So I'll snip at the whole thing. I am so manly.

Folks, you don't have to write a book like this. Your book doesn't have to be written step-by-mother'lovin' step. You don't need to write a one sentence followed by a paragraph followed by a page and so on. You can just meet a character and start writing. You can have a situation, a line of dialog, anything you want and just start writing! Do you like to outline? So just outline what you want to outline, in as garbled a mess as you need to, and then get on with it.

A query letter I got once, through BBT Magazine, had this line toward the bottom: My second novel is currently slated to enter production at the end of next month.

Neat! And I am currently slated to change my pants around the same time! It's not a damn movie. I realize that kid was just trying to sound highly impressive, but it just comes off as silly and lazy.

Writing gets way too high-handed at times. The writers do, I mean. The writing itself fails to care one way or the other. Writers are either plucking their mystical words out of the ether as their ethereal muse guides them along their paths to Byzantium, or else they are acting as though their books are movies, like above.

You can just write. Okay? Nothing more, nothing less, just write. That doesn't mean you have to write by the seat of your pants, because not everyone does that, but good lord. This is writing.

This is storytelling, when you get down to it. We are the descendants of the men who told stories around a campfire, handing them down from generation to generation, and of the women who told their own stories in their own languages that the young men did not know and the old men were too wise to learn. We owe it to each other to tell stories. Not tell each other how we're someday going to tell somebody a story.

It's like dieting by reading a ton of dieting books. You're still getting fatter. This is the same thing. You can outline and plan and prepare all you want, but if you don't get down to it sooner or later and just write, then you're not accomplishing anything. Sooner or later, it goes from planning to stalling. One is useful. The other is fear.

HP7

I just finished it.

It was wonderful.

I loved it.

The best laid plans...

My plan for working was something along the lines of "get in, do a half decent job, get out" and eventually quit and go back to being a stay-at-home-mom.

So what happens? On Thursday, I got a freaking promotion. Yeah, seriously. The other girl in my department has been off for minor surgery, so I've been shouldering a massive load. And apparently I'm pretty damn efficient. LOL

My boss kept telling me what a good job I was doing and how much she appreciated my efforts. Then yesterday, she tells me I got a promotion (same job, different level & pay scale) and ... a RAISE.

Now the really funny part is that the policy is that you have to be there for 2 years to get a promotion, but they made a freaking exception in my case. WTF?!

So I try to be half-decent and end up making myself indispensable. Something's just not right, here! LOL!!

Fortunately, my coworkers are 98% smart-asses, (talk about a good work environment!) so I've been getting comments about my diabolical plan for world domination, and this is just the first step. MUWAHAHAHAHAHA Little do they know that it's actually the THIRD step!

Er... never mind. You didn't just read that.

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong. Maybe I need to TRY to be indispensable...

Nee-chee! Nee-chee!

I don't have much to say tonight, because I'm reeeeeallly tired. The only reason I'm still upright + conscious is that I'm making a desperate effort to work on my Rome novel. It doesn't do me any good to know how it all goes from here to the very end if I don't work on it.

However, I have this link, and I just had to share it. Because what could be cooler than Jerry Springer Meets Philosophy? Honestly, Carrie and I should have written it. I'm ashamed we didn't.

Time to go see if I can do a thousand words or so, for the first time in two weeks. Wha-hey, I'm already at 700.

*zonks out*